The 25 Scariest Horror Movies on Netflix Now: Can You Handle Them?

DIRECTOR: Susanne Bier

CAST: Sandra Bullock, Trevante Rhodes, John Malkovich, Sarah Paulson

RATING: R

As a pop-culture artifact, Bird Box is probably best known for Netflix’s claim that it broke viewing records during its Christmas 2018 release, with its score by Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross coming a close second. But this post-apocalyptic thriller’s depiction of the breakdown of society, as invisible monsters cause a pandemic of insanity and suicide, is hard to shake.

Watch Bird Box on Netflix

DIRECTOR: John R. Leonetti
CAST: Kiernan Shipka, Stanley Tucci, Miranda Otto, John Corbett
RATING: PG-13

Or “I Can’t Believe It’s Not A Quiet Place!” Filmed nearly simultaneously as John Krasinski’s horror blockbuster, though based on a novel by writer Tim Lebbon that predates the better-known film, The Silence stars Kiernan Shipka as a deaf teenager who, along with her parents (the great Stanley Tucci and Shipka’s Sabrina co-star Miranda Otto), attempts to survive both an apocalyptic infestation of sound-sensitive monsters and sinister humans who seek to exploit her for their own ends. The strong cast and the sense that you’re watching a relatively unapologetic B-movie separate this one from its doppelgänger.

Watch The Silence on Netflix

Director: Eli Roth
Starring: Lorenza Izzo, Sky Ferreira
Rating: R

Eli Roth is nobody’s idea of a world class director, but there’s no denying his career has taken an unexpectedly interesting turn since smartly abandoning his “torture porn” phase. In the Washington Post, Sonny Bunch described Roth’s recent output as “Dad horror,” which is a smart and apt observation. Roth’s 2014 film The Green Inferno is, on its surface, a movie about a savage band of cannibals who reside deep in the jungles of South America, but what elevates it from a pure gross-out fest into something more ambitious is the way it explores how certain political factions prey on the youthful naiveté of college students desperate to appear woke.—Mark Graham

Watch The Green Inferno on Netflix

DIRECTOR: Scott Stewart
CAST: Keri Russell, Josh Hamilton, Dakota Goyo, J.K. Simmons
RATING: PG-13

A strong cast led by The Americans’ Keri Russell anchors this film, which combines the haunted-house and alien-visitation subgenres into a peanut-butter-and-chocolate combination. Russell stars as Lacy, a woman who gradually comes to believe that the strange phenomena affecting her house and threatening her children are the acts of extraterrestrial visitors. The movie’s producers include Jason Blum, whose Blumhouse shingle dominated horror in the 2010s.

Watch Dark Skies on Netflix

DIRECTOR: Mark Tonderal
CAST: Jennifer Lawrence
RATING: R

Sometimes a studio delay works out great for the producers, and you could say that happened with this horror film, which wasn’t loved by critics but still became a box office success due in no small part to the fact that it stars Jennifer Lawrence, who was on the cusp of stardom in 2010 when it was filmed, but had fully burst out with The Hunger Games and Silver Linings Playbook by the time it came out two years later.

The film is a textbook horror plot: Lawrence plays a girl who learns of a family that was gruesomely murdered on the street her family has just moved onto. When she befriends the sole survivor of the massacre, the family’s son, she learns that everything might not be as it seems.

Watch The House At The End Of The Street on Netflix

DIRECTOR: David Bruckner
CAST: Rafe Spall, Arsher Ali, Robert James-Collier, Sam Troughton
RATING: TV-MA

Like an all-dude version of The Descent, Ritual explores the way the bonds of male friendship either hold up or collapse under threat from supernatural forces. After a tragedy, four friends take a hiking trip into the Swedish woods, where they are set upon by a mysterious creature—which may or may not be as threatening as the locals. It’s based on the Adam Nevill novel of the same name, and it’s got atmosphere to burn.

Watch The Ritual on Netflix

DIRECTOR: Ciarán Foy
CAST: Kelly Reilly, Lili Taylor, Charlie Shotwell, Sadie Sink
RATING: TV-MA

This variant on the tried-and-true horror concept of the demonic child dares to ask the question “What if the li’l Anti-Christ in the family isn’t the biggest monster in the movie?” Charlie Shotwell stars as Eli, the child in question, with Kelly Reilly as his long-suffering mother and Lili Taylor as a doctor whose cure for Eli’s horrific “allergic reactions” may be worse than the disease. For a new spin on a familiar idea, give this one a try.

Watch Eli on Netflix

DIRECTORS: Ben Howling, Yolanda Ramke
CAST: Martin Freeman, Simone Landers, Anthony Hayes, Susie Porter
RATING: TV-MA

The post-apocalypse brings people together as well as tearing them apart in this Australian horror film, adapted by directors Ben Howling and Yolanda Ramke from their short film of the same name. Martin Freeman stars as Andy, a man desperately trying to protect himself, his wife, and their infant from a world overrun by a virus that turns people into rabid killers; Simone Landers stars as Thoomi, an Aboriginal girl desperate to save her infected father. As with many zombie and zombie-esque stories, the need to preserve your essential humanity in dark times is a core value.

Watch Cargo on Netflix

DIRECTOR: McG
CAST: Samara Weaving, Bella Thorne, Hana Mae Lee
RATING: R

There are plenty of classic elements in Halloween movies: spooky ghosts, haunted mansions, terrifying crypts, and so on, and we’ve covered most of them already. You know what other classic element we’re missing, though? Horny teenagers! This 2017 film hits that note perfectly, with Judah Lewis starring as Cole, a teenager enamored with his hot babysitter Bee (Samara Weaving). While spying on her one night, he realizes that she’s part of a demonic, murderous cult, and suddenly finds himself in grave danger.

It’s not the most original film, but it plays its campy role perfectly, and makes for a fun romp from start to finish.—Scott Hines

Watch The Babysitter on Netflix

DIRECTOR: Vincenzo Natali
CAST: Harrison Gilbertson, Laysla De Oliveira, Avery Whitted, Ruth Wilson, Patrick Wilson, Will Buie Jr.
RATING: TV-MA

An adaptation of a collaborative novel by both Stephen King and his horror-master son Joe Hill, adapted by the director of cult-classic mind-twisters Cube and Splice? How’s that for a pedigree? Laysla De Oliveira and Avery Whitted star as sibblings Becky and Cal DeMuth, who become hopelessly entangled in a spacetime-warping field during a road trip together, where evil stalks them. You can feel King’s trademark “wouldn’t it be neat if…?” idea machine whirring in the background as you watch.

Watch In The Tall Grass on Netflix

DIRECTOR: Mike Flanagan
CAST: Kate Siegel, John Gallagher Jr., Michael Trucco, Samantha Sloya
RATING: R

Co-written by director Mike Flanagan (Oculus, Doctor Sleep) and star Kate Siegel, Hush is a slasher film that uses its main character’s deafness in the same way that the proto-slasher Audrey Hepburn flick Wait Until Dark utilized blindness. Another Blumhouse joint, it cemented Flanagan’s rise as one of America’s preeminent horror filmmakers; you can also find his adaptations of Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House and Henry James’ The Turn Of The Screw under the title The Haunting Of Bly Manor on the big red streaming service if you’re thirsty for more.

Watch Hush on Netflix

DIRECTOR: Leo Gabriadze
CAST: Shelly Hennig, Moses Storm, Renee Olstead, Will Peltz
RATING: R

A fascinating spin on the found-footage horror subgenre, Unfriended tells its story almost entirely through a static shot of a MacBook computer screen, on which dark things are unfolding. It’s a good old-fashioned morality play about the evils of cyberbullying, following the online misadventures of six friends who are stalked from beyond the grave after driving one of their classmates to suicide. The movie made sixty-four times its budget back in theaters—proof that even the most bare-bones horror can make big bucks.

Watch Unfriended on Netflix

DIRECTOR: Eli Roth
CAST: Keanu Reeves, Lorena Izzo, Ana de Armas
RATING: R

Remember erotic thrillers? Hostel auteur Eli Roth certainly does, and Knock Knock is the result. Keanu Reeves stars as a happily married man named whose life comes apart when he takes in two seemingly lost young women who turn out to have big, bad plans for Evan and his family. In addition to being a part of the Keanaissance, the flick features an early turn from Blade Runner 2049 scene-stealer Ana de Armas as one of the “houseguests.”

Watch Knock Knock on Netflix

DIRECTOR: Dan Gilroy
CAST: Jake Gyllenhaal, Rene Russo, Riz Ahmed, Bill PAxton
RATING: R

In which Jake Gyllenhaal delivers a vividly sleazy performance that’ll make you wonder if this film would be better off entitled Skincrawler. Gyllenhaal plays Lou Bloom, a “stringer,” or freelance videographer, who cruises the Los Angeles night looking for death and destruction he can document and sell to the local news. There’s nothing supernatural or even all that unusual going on here, which makes the central premise that much more unsettling.

Watch Nightcrawler on Netflix

DIRECTOR: Osgood Perkins
CAST: Ruth Wilson, Paula Prentiss, Bob Balaban, Lucy Boynton
RATING: TV-14

What if a master horror novelist’s most famous book was secretly based on an all-too-true story? Nurse Lili Saylor (His Dark Materials’ Ruth Wilson) is given good reason to ask this question when she takes a job as a caretaker for retired writer Iris Blum (Paula Prentiss), only to discover a sinister connection with the protagonist of Blum’s classic novel The Lady in the Walls, who may be less imaginary than she originally appeared. Honestly, this one wins points for its evocative title alone.

Watch I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House on Netflix

DIRECTOR: Patrick Brice
CAST: Mark Duplass, Patrick Brice
RATING: R

Former mumblecore master and The League star Mark Duplass takes a wild left turn for his role in this disturbing found-footage horror film. Duplass stars as the titular creep, a fellow named Josef who snookers a struggling videographer named Aaron (Patrick Brice) into recording his sadistic exploits and confessions. A Blumhouse Productions affair, it hearkens back to the cult-classic serial-killer mockumentary Man Bites Dog, the granddaddy of the genre. Creep II is also available on Netflix as of this writing.

Watch Creep on Netflix

DIRECTOR: Mike Flanagan
CAST: Carla Gugino, Bruce Greenwood
RATING: TV-MA

It’s maybe Stephen King’s most ingeniously simple horror high concept this side of “evil clown in the sewer”: A couple’s experiment with BDSM goes horribly awry when the husband dies of a heart attack, leaving his wife handcuffed to the bed with with no key and no means, or hope, of escape. This adaptation, from Netflix horror’s favorite son Mike Flanagan, is notable for Gugino’s tour de force performance as a woman pushed to her limits.

Watch Gerald's Game on Netflix

DIRECTOR: Gareth Evans
CAST: Dan Stevens, Michael Sheen, Mark Lewis Jones, Paul Higgins, Lucy Boynton
RATING: Not Rated

Netflix’s stab at folk horror, a very fertile subgenre from the British Isles, stars Downton Abbey‘s Dan Stevens as a man out to rescue his sister from an isolated cult led by Michael Sheen, a perpetual delight in virtually everything he appears in. Its most obvious influence is The Wicker Man, but it brings a very contemporary brutal intensity to the concept. It also marks the horror genre debut of director Gareth Evans, previously best known for his claustrophobic Indonesian action masterpiece The Raid.

Watch Apostle on Netflix

DIRECTOR: Osgood Perkins

CAST: Emma Roberts, Kiernan Shipka, Lucy Boynton

RATING: R

“Young women at a boarding school that may be run by a coven” is a fecund subgenre for horror—Suspiria, anyone? The Blackcoat’s Daughter is an American, Catholic take on the concept, starring Mad Men‘s Kiernan Shipka, The Politician‘s Lucy Boynton, and Scream Queens‘s Emma Roberts in intertwining timelines as girls left behind during vacation at their prestigious school, where bad shit ensues. Director Osgood Perkins is also responsible for the Netflix horror flick I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House, starring the marvelous Ruth Wilson.

Watch The Blackcoat's Daughter on Netflix

Director: James Wan
Starring: Patrick Wilson, Vera Farmiga, Lili Taylor, Ron Livingston
Rating: R

Married paranormal investigators go to investigate the strange goings on at a creaky Rhode Island home, and all manner of creepy things are encountered. That this story was supposedly based on real-life demonologists gives the whole thing an Amityville Horror-esque appeal, but it’s also just simply one of the best-acted horror films of the decade, with Wilson, Farmiga, and Taylor all working at the top of their game.—Joe Reid

Watch The Conjuring on Netflix

DIRECTOR: Guillermo del Toro

CAST: Ivana Baquero, Sergi López, Doug Jones, Maribel Verdú

RATING: R

Guillermo del Toro’s beautiful dark twisted fantasy stars Ivana Baquero as a little girl who escapes from the terror of her literally fascist stepfather into a mystical, is-it-or-isn’t-it-imaginary world of bizarre creatures and the magic that moves them. Del Toro’s reputation as a maker of marvelous monsters essentially comes down to his frequent collaborator Doug Jones’s heavily made-up performance as the Pale Man, the famous beast with eyes in his hands—it’s that strong a visual.

Watch Pan's Labyrinth on Netflix

DIRECTOR: Paul Thomas Anderson

CAST: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano, Kevin J. O’Connor, Dillon Freasier

RATING: R

I’ve long said that Paul Thomas Anderson has an all-time great horror movie in him, if he ever chooses to let it out. Until then, there’s his 2007 masterpiece There Will Be Blood, a movie that delivers on its titular promise in a way that would make The Texas Chain Saw Massacre proud. Daniel Day-Lewis delivers an all-time great performance as Daniel Plainview, a budding oil magnate who butts heads with local preacher Eli Sunday (Paul Dano). Few people think of this as a horror movie, but Plainview’s slow-burning onset of madness, Radiohead guitarist Jonny Greenwood’s menacing score, and unforgettable shots like the close-up on Plainview’s face illuminated by an oil-rig fire against a sea of darkness, make this movie scarier than any number of slashers.

Watch There Will Be Blood on Netflix

DIRECTOR: Karyn Kusama

CAST: Logan Marshall-Green, Tammy Blanchard, Michiel Huisman, Emaytzy Corinealdi

RATING: Not Rated

Speaking of intimate, home-based horror, it doesn’t come much more up close and personal than director Karyn Kusama’s disturbing domestic drama about a couple whose marriage ended abruptly after the loss of their child. When the ex-husband is invited to a dinner party thrown by his ex-wife and her new mate, he soon realizes there’s much more than dinner on the menu. Kusama, whose previous stab at horror Jennifer’s Body is a cult classic in its own right, creates an atmosphere of intense anxiety and paranoia.

Watch The Invitation on Netflix

DIRECTOR: Trey Edward Shults

CAST: Joel Edgerton, Christopher Abbott, Carmen Ejogo, Riley Keough, Kelvin Harrison Jr.

RATING: R

Post-apocalyptic horror always treads a fine line. Is collaboration and cooperation required for survival, or does reactionary violence rule the day? Trey Edward Shults’s survival-horror film It Comes at Night sets its sights right on that line, then walks all over it, as a family led by protective father Joel Edgerton decides what to do when another family intrudes on their highly protected homestead. The film is part of studio A24’s impressive horror slate, which ranges from Under the Skin to The Blackcoat’s Daughter to The Witch to Hereditary.

Watch It Comes At Night on Netflix

DIRECTOR: Stanley Kubrick
CAST: Malcolm McDowell, Patrick Magee, Michael Bates, Miriam Karlin
RATING: R

Adapted from the dystopian novel by Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange is legendary director Stanley Kubrick’s most controversial and disturbing film, which is saying something. Malcolm McDowell turns in a star-making performance as Alex, the sharply dressed ringleader of a vicious gang of young sociopaths. When he’s finally brought to justice, he’s forced to undergo a brutal aversion-therapy treatment, leaving us with the question: Is he a victim, a monster, or both? Viddy well, o my droogs, viddy well.

Watch A Clockwork Orange on Netflix